In a quaint and quiet neighborhood right outside of Orange County, California a 100-year old gem of a home rests. Our clients purchased the property from a real estate company who had plans to tear it down and build two homes on the existing lot. The real estate company simply saw it as a structure, but our clients set their sites on this home for a future place to raise their growing family and create wonderful memories. When we say everything happens for a reason, we really do mean it!

After lots of hard work, papers were signed and our clients bought the property. Watts Architects boarded a plane in December 2014 and thus the project began! Now with only 9 months behind us, numerous site visits, lots of hard work from our clients, and many, many, dumpsters full of garbage, the transformations are already incredible! (The yummy lunches provided by our clients on site visits helped too…just another perk of working for such great people!)

We’re thrilled to be working on this restoration and helping to restore a little piece of history…We will be updating our readers on this amazing transformation. Right now, we are in the process of submitting a full set of plans to the city. Pictures below are from our very first site visit in December.

The arches are one of our favorite parts about the property. They encompass the Spanish style so well.

The home has incredible floor patterns that we are hoping to preserve.

Mapping out the new driveway location.

The property is full of luscious and large trees that offer privacy and great sound barriers.

The existing garage will be the home to the new master suite.

Way back when, this was the front door but after changes in a road behind the home, it has now become the back door. The courtyard “curved wall” shown

below will be the new entrance into the home.

The curved wall leads into the most magical courtyard….A true testament of the Spanish style. We have great plans for the courtyard!

While we love designing custom homes and remodels, occasionally we step out of comfort zone–ok, so this was a giant leap out of comfort zone–to create spaces that cause a different kind of awe.

This behind-the-scenes video of the Grand America Hotel’s JouJou Toy Store shows how a creative process distills the efforts of architects and designers. This has been one of our favorite projects. We hope you enjoy this small documentary and visit JouJou soon.

Look at these gorgeous glass front doors. The frames are made of stainless steel and have sand blasted patterns on the glass.

Full glass front doors are very rare. They were chosen so the owners and their guests could enjoy the beautiful mountain view and lovely backyard water feature from inside the house. In addition, when guests walk up to the front door they are able to get a great view through the house of the whole valley. These beautiful glass doors were made by Metals Manufacturer in Salt Lake City. Quite stunning, don’t you think!?!

Imagine showering in a luxurious master bathroom where all around you are beautiful scenic views. This is exactly the shower we designed for the owners of the Limekiln Gulch home (see below).

The owners of this home wanted to shower in a location where all around them were amazing views. They wanted to be as close to nature as possible without actually being in nature.

There are a lot of mirrors and refelctive materials in the bathroom as well to enhance the views. In addition, the faucets and hardware are all very minimal so the focus is on the surrounding views.

This was our first time building a shower where the glass panels would overlap one another and where there would be small gaps in the glass panels. We were not sure if water would splash out where the gaps were in the panels. To test it (before installing the glass), Kevin had people hold up the glass panels and made the project manager stand in the shower (with his clothes on of course). Then the project manager was sprayed by a hose to see how the water bounced and spayed on the shower’s glass panels. Luckily, everything worked out! Utah Style Magazine did a feature on this shower in their last issue (check it out here).

Need a conversation starter? We have one for you: temperature-sensitive LED faucets in the powder room. Believe us, this one is a winner! We implemented this design element into our Limekiln Gulch home because the powder room is a high traffic area for guests and the owners wanted to catch their guests’ attention with a striking and surprising water feature. It got their guests talking and we are sure it will get yours talking too!

These uniquely beautiful faucets were made by Hansa (a company based in Georgia) and were supplied by Mountainland Design. The colored light turns on when the water is turned on. The color actually changes depending on the temperature of the water (blue for cold water, purple for warm water and red for hot water).

To continue with our Limekiln Gulch home detail post series, today we will focus on the home’s beautiful exterior stone.

The stone was supplied by Mankato Kasota Stone and was used on the exterior walls, the front walkway, on portions of the driveway and around planters. The stone was chosen by the owners. In this case, the stone color was affected by the way it was cut (smooth or rough cut). As in all stones, there is variation in the color from one piece to another. After reviewing several cuts, the owners decided they liked the stone colors when it had a smooth finish. We think they chose well.

The joints were designed to cover the morter lines (so there is no horizontal morter shown) and to give the stone some shadow depth.

We believe beauty lies in the details and want to highlight the beautiful details of our Limekiln Gulch home (check out more photos here). So get ready for a series of Limekiln Gulch detail posts that will highlight doors, showers, facuets and exterior stone. We hope these posts will inspire you in your own home design projects.

We will begin with the inspired interior doors.

These doors were made by Wavell-Huber. The hardware has a brushed stainless finish and was crafted by Inox and supplied by Il Bagno. The wood material on the doors are South American veneers, jequitba and bubinga pomeli (the decorative strips in the middle of the door). We selected the wood from from a place in Oakland, California, called Exotic Woods.

At first when we talked with the owners about adding some sort of pattern or trim to the 9′ interior doors none of the ideas really felt right. Then one night the owners were watching The Apprentice and noticed that the board room doors had a different kind of wood inlayed into its doors. They loved this look and phoned us the next day to share their inspiration. We suggested having bubinga pomeli (the decorative strips in the middle of the door) inlayed into the jequitba. They loved the idea and are pleased with the final product.

We thought it would be nice every once in a while to highlight buildings and architectural structures in Salt Lake City that we admire and inspire us. So, today we are pleased to highlight The Utah State Capitol Building. She’s truly a beauty!

To give you a little history, The Utah State Capitol Building was designed by Richard Karl August Kletting in 1912. He entered the design for the building into a contest with nine other contestants and his design won. Can you imagine how he felt after winning? Probably a bit overwhelmed and extremely excited.

The building is 404 feet long and 240 feet wide. There is 285 feet from the base of the building to the top of its dome. The entire building is similar in design to the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. Some of the building’s beauty and grandeur comes from the porticos, pediments and monumental columns and the rest comes from its absolutely gorgeous views. In addition, it has monumental free-standing columns on three of its sides. It should be noted that Kletting’s design was the only architectural plan that proposed having these monumental free-standing columns on three sides of the building. The other columns along the rest of the exterior are constructed of Utah granite taken from Little Cottonwood Canyon in Salt Lake County.

An interesting fact is that the dome is sometimes called Walterized Wren, and does bear a strong resemblemance to the dome of the U. S. Capitol designed by Thomas U. Walter.

What we admire about the building is that it rests on a raised, rusticated basement, has beautiful monumental flights of stairs which lead to doors recessed behind colossal Corinthian columned porticos. It is an absolutely breathing taking building and we appreciate that it is not overly decorated and has a more strictly Classical feel than Renaissance.

The Utah State Capitol Building is definitely one of our favorite buildings in Salt Lake City. We hope you have the opportunity to appreciate its majesty and gorgeous views.

The owners of the beautiful house below wanted to work with a personal architect (us) to complete their expansion project because they really wanted to maintain the integrity of their property and the look of the original home (an 100 year-old English Tudor).

“From the outside we wanted the home to have a very tradition look,” one of the owners said. “But I also wanted a place to display my collection of motorcycles.”

You can see below how we were able to keep the traditional look of the home and create a display area in the garage for the owners toys (motorcycles) which were made between the 1930’s and 1970’s.

A high arched hallway.

A 1947 Indian Chief.

A 1937 Harley Davidson Knucklehead (the second year for this particular engine).

Prop used in the television series, Touched by an Angel. It hangs above the motorcycles.

One of the owners said his fascination with motorcylces lies in their craftsmanship. “They are more hardwork than hardware,” he said.

He does not have a favorite motorcycle because they each have a special story and design to share. During the summer, you can find him taking each bike out for a long ride.

The owners' dog sitting on top of one of the motorcycles with his Harley Davidson t-shirt on.